Colorado is having a dry winter, and over the past few days we've had very high winds along the Front Range area, where I live. These conditions create a high risk for wildfires, as evidenced by the Marshal Fire in 2021. Xcel instituted a Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) event twice in 3 days to reduce this risk.
The first event started about 10a on Wednesday and lasted until Noon on Thursday (14 hours). The second event started at 6a on Friday and lasted into Saturday (over 24 hours).
There are many ways to deal with an outage like this. Some of these include (from less to more advanced):
- Buy ice, candles. Low tech but it works
- Portable Batteries to power essentials
- Portable Generator to power essentials
- Whole Home Generator
- Bi-Directional EV
- Solar + Battery
While the ideal situation would be whole house solar with battery backup, for an uninterrupted supply of power, it is also an expensive solution that is only beginning to make economical sense if you can use it on a variable rate power plan to shift your daily usage. See Base Power in Texas.
A gas generator is a well tested and durable solution, either portable or a larger whole-house version. The downsides are that they require regular maintenance if not used regularly, they are noisy, and they burn gas.
While I do have (and love) my EV, it is not capable of bi-directional use. IE, I can't draw power from it other than to drive or through the cigarette adapter (generally limited to ~100W).
What I do have is a portable battery and solar setup I primarily use to augment the onboard solar and batteries of my camper. But the setup also works well in this situation.
My Setup (Prices current of 12/2025, including sales):
- EcoFlow Delta 2 Max ($850)
- EcoFlow 400W Solar Array ($599)
- Renology 400W Solar Array ($499)
- EcoFlow 800W Alternator Charger ($289)
The Delta 2 Max is a 2kWh portable battery with inverter. This means it can provide 2 kW of power for an hour (or 200 W for 10 hours). It can also charge from the solar panel arrays (up to 2) or the Alternator Charger (among other sources).
During the outage, I used extension cords to plug in our refrigerator, chest freezer, and networking gear (Internet, WIFI, etc), plus some phone/laptop chargers and lights.
The networking components draw a constant ~100W. The Refrigerator and Freezer each draw about 100-200W while the compressor is running, and the rest are generally less than 100W.
This means that the average draw was somewhere around 200-300W throughout the day.
While the sun is out (which is pretty brief as we approach the winer solstice) I used the solar arrays to keep the battery charged. But since they days were short, and there was quite a bit of cloud cover, the 800W of solar panels averaged only a couple hundred watts, generally about break-even. It is important to remember that even in peak conditions, the panels generally don't deliver their advertised power. I think about 350W is the best I've seen off either panel in the direct Colorado sunshine.
So for the rest of the day I utilized the 800W Alternator charger installed in our pickup truck (normally used to tow our camper). The Alternator Charger is an adapter that is hard wired to the battery terminals and outputs up to 800W to the EcoFlow battery. This means it is roughly capable of charging the battery (assuming no power draw) in about 2 1/2 hours.
This setup kept all the essentials running through the outage. The battery did drain overnight, but for the few hours the power was out the refrigerator and freezer stayed cold enough.
I only had to run the truck to charge the battery in the evening after the sun set, and then again right before bed to tip it off for overnight.
Overall this was pretty successful. We didn't have the constant noise from a gas generator, although we did have the truck noise in the evenings. It kept the food cold and the family entertained during the outage. With the truck standing in as a gas (diesel) generator to top up the battery, this solution can provide power indefinitely.
Since the primary usage of this setup is for camping, it is a nice bonus as a home backup solution. From a cost perspective, it is pretty expensive compared to a portable gas generator. A high end portable Honda that can output much more power would cost about 1k (less than half of this solution), but it would have to be running the entire time you want power.
The whole house solutions are much nicer, but for the limited use cases (this is the first outage of this size I can remember in 15 years here) they are very expensive for the value.
For shorter outages, the EcoFlow Delta 2 Max by itself, or with a single set of panels does compare well to a gas generator for a silent, more environmentally friendly approach. But for longer outages like this one it requires the gas backup (in this case the Alternator Charger).
One limitation we did discover is that the battery backup for our internet provider is only about 12 hours, but luckily for us they added a gas generator during the second outage to keep everything running.
